In the poem The Wanderer what images does the poet use to convey isolation and despair?

Answer 1

Initially, I'd say do your own homework. If you don't do these pointless exercises, you'll never learn how to learn, and if you can't do that, you'll just become another pointless robot in society, unable to get anywhere other than where you think you're being pushed, who complains about their ordinary and unfulfilling job, and vows that so-help-you-Jesus someday, you'll tell your boss all about it. Maybe you'll raise another ordinary kid or two, just to complete the cycle, maybe you'll do something wacky like go skydiving or write a boring novel. And when you finally check out, no-one's going to really remember you, other than "they liked music and movies, and sometimes they told funny jokes", because the sort of person that begs for everything in life is someone who never bothers to cultivate their own individuality. They'll put flowers on your grave because they won't know what else to do. Your entire life will have been useless to yourself and to everyone around you. Is that really what you want? But... you know what? I don't want you to get anywhere in life. Not if you're going to perpetuate everyone's misery instead of doing something about it, so the best way for me to keep you down and out is to give you all the easy answers when you ask for them, so that when the time comes for you to answer the hard questions, you won't have any practice, and you'll fail. Thus you become just another face in the crowd, a roughly printed obituary in the local paper, a statistic. So, here you are, served on a silver plate: In the ancient Anglo-Saxon poem THE WANDERER, there are three kinds of imagery which the poet presents in order to convey the feelings of isolation and despair: Geographic, Biological, and emotional. Each one of these themes serves a very specific purpose in the piece. The geographic imagery uses the harshness of the landscape to reflect the apparent apathy which the wanderer sees in the world. Examples of this can be seen in the "ice-cold sea" "frozen waves" and the "paths of exile". The animals and plants in the poem aren't necessarily real to the Wanderer's world, but their presence serves to explain why the narrator feels that there is sorrow in the world: The living creatures like the sea-birds and the gray wolf prove that there is beauty in the universe, but it still can't be seen, because everyone's busy with either warfare, which has caused their own kingdoms to crumble, or they're wallowing in their own self-pity. The emotional imagery in the poem is by far the most prevalent, but it's also the most elusive, because it is integral to the very structure of the poem itself. Without the Wanderer's constant assertion that all is hopeless, through imagery like the "spirits of wayfarers" or lords who lie "deprived of joy", we see that his argument falls apart, that the only apparent problem is the narrator's choice to be acted upon, rather than to act, and so they feel it's inevitable that everyone should also meet a sorrowful end as a life of wasted potential. Each one of these themes can convey by itself the message the poet is attempting to get across, but when all the imagery is combined it creates a symphony of malaise which tells its readers that the only way to experience joy in life is to live it yourself, even with all of its hardships, rather than have others live it for you. Does that sound familiar? I've set the bait. Are you going to take it? If you take it, will you win? Questions, questions, and you'll need your own wisdom to answer them. Oh, wait, that's right. Guess we'll see you in oblivion! Have fun!